Recently, in the trend of power consumption reduction such as global warming prevention and energy saving laws, it is also required to reduce power consumption at factories. Since compressed air obtained by compressing air in the atmosphere can be used around us, compressed air is widely used as a power source for driving a pneumatic tool, a pneumatic press, an air brake, a spray gun, and the like. Hereafter, devices driven by compressed air are collectively referred to as end devices. Compressed air is compressed by an air compressor and supplied to an end device via a pipeline network provided in a factory. It is said that the power consumption of the air compressor accounts for 20 to 30% of the total power consumption of the factory. It is thus necessary to reduce the power consumption of the air compressor so as to save energy at the factory.
In the process of supplying the compressed air from the compressor to each of the end devices via the pipeline network, air leakage may occur in the pipeline network due to aged deterioration of an air pipeline, a gap occurring in a pipeline joint and a curved part and the like. In some cases, an air leakage amount reaches 10 to 20% of an air consumption amount of a factory. In order to reduce the power consumption of the air compressor, it is important to grasp an air leakage amount and a leakage position and take measures against leakage.
In such a pipeline network, as an air leakage diagnosing device for grasping an air leakage amount and a leakage position in such a pipeline network, Patent Literature 1 discloses an air leakage diagnosing technique capable of acquiring an air leakage amount and a leakage position by calculating a flow of air in a pipeline network and by solving an optimization problem that minimizes an objective function defined from the calculation value and a measurement value.